More voices emerge in support of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard

In the past two weeks, California’s California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) received a heavy dose of positive news: strong support from major companies to develop cleaner transportation fuel options and solid evidence to prove the standard is working.

On April 2nd, major business interests and non-profit organizations across the state filed four separate briefs supporting the LCFS in the state Appeals Court in Fresno. The briefs, filed in response to a letter from the court in February, say definitively that the LCFS is a necessary program for California because it creates a market signal for new, cleaner fuels and solutions that can grow California’s economy and improve air quality.

The impressive diversity of interests weighing in is a who’s-who list of energy giants, including the nation’s largest supplier of natural gas for vehicles (Clean Energy), a 108-year old utility with 15 million customers (Pacific Gas & Electric), a consortium of alternative diesel companies (National Biodiesel Board and the California Biodiesel Alliance), and a coalition of five environmental organizations.

Notable excerpts from the briefs include:

With the impetus of the LCFS, the biodiesel industry in California is poised to triple in the next few years with substantial investments and new jobs in many of California’s most economically disadvantaged areas.

PG&E supports the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in its efforts to preserve the LCFS…the LCFS is an important part of the overall California strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, contributing 16 million metric tons of reductions…with a significant disruption to the LCFS program, it will make it less likely that California will reach its GHG emission reductions goals.

The LCFS encourages companies to invest in low-carbon fuels to meet increasingly stringent performance targets. Based on statements from alternative fueling industries and the CARB LCFS Fourth Quarterly 2012 Update, even at this early stage of implementation, the LCFS has resulted in rising quantities of lower carbon fuels being consumed in California and the market is rewarding investments in cutting edge, low-carbon fuels.

In addition to the legal filings, California also released its latest progress report on LCFS implementationin March showing growth in low carbon fuel deliveries to the state. Credits from the cleanest biofuels have grown by 300% in just nine months, and the data shows that regulated companies have over-complied with the standard by 45% — that’s more than a million tons over the past two years.

Reports have also begun surfacing that major deals for bulk volumes of low carbon fuels are on the horizon. For example, Neste Oil submitted a letter to the California State Senate stating they have already delivered commercial volumes of renewable diesel from tallow (an ultra-low carbon fuel) to California and “expects to deliver approximately a hundred million gallons of NExBTL renewable diesel fuel into California this year.”

In a similar story, San Diego-based Sapphire Energy recently entered into its first commercial agreement for “green crude” (made from algae) sales – an agreement with oil giant Tesoro. According to Sapphire’s president, “This moment is enormously important for the industry as it validates the benefits and advantages of [our] crude, and confirms its place as a market-viable, refiner-ready, renewable crude oil solution.” In a story on Sapphire’s website, the new partnership with Tesoro was described as potentially helping supply clean energy to meet the demand created by new fuel standards, including California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

Implementation of the LCFS is still in the early stages, but in just over two years the standard has started to deliver tangible economic and environmental benefits. The regulation is poised to change a fossil-fuel dependent transportation system that has been developed over the last one hundred years and that costs California drivers almost one hundred billion dollars every year – most of which leaves our state (and nation) the moment it’s spent.

Using Californian ingenuity and the American entrepreneurial engine, we can change the status quo – toward a more sustainable system that doesn’t poison the air and pinch our pocketbooks.